The game started innocently en... actually, no, from the very beginning the poor dwarves were plagued by murderous elephants. Then came the food shortages. And the goblins. Then the floods. And then the lava. All of this was compounded by the usual problems of a succession game, with leaders at odds over how to run the settlement, half-finished and forgotten projects, an increasingly labyrinthine fort layout, and outbreaks of megalomania and supervillainy. By the end of the thread the fort is in ruins, but everyone agrees that they've created the root of evil in the dwarven universe.

The Boatmurdered saga provides examples of:

Apocalyptic Log: The whole LP is essentially the story of one town's damnation. It lightens up in some places, but the elephant sieges, and especially the last foreman's entries, are pretty grim.

On a related note, the "Journal of Kith," a sort of Spiritual Sequel. It also provides an example of a Madness Montage in the form of the various amulets the narrator crafts.note Finished an amulet today. It is crafted of dolomite. It menaces with spikes of gneiss. It menaces with spikes of limestone. It depicts an image of an elephant. It depicts an image of a dwarf. The dwarf is cringing. The elephant is laughing at the dwarf.Finished an amulet today. It is crafted of obsidian. It menaces with spikes of basalt. It menaces with spikes of granite. It depicts an image of a dwarf. It depicts an image of a elephant. The dwarf is in a fetal position. The elephant is striking the dwarf down.Finished an amulet today. It is crafted of dolomite. It menaces with spikes of petrified wood. It menaces with spikes of alabaster. It depicts an image of a elephant. It depicts an image of a tentacle demon. It depicts an image of a dwarf. The tentacle demon is doing an unspeakable act to the dwarf. The elephant is laughing at the dwarf.Finished an amulet today. It is crafted of marble. It menaces with spikes of jet. It menaces with spikes of onyx. It depicts an image of an elephant. It depicts an image of a goblin. It depicts an image if a human. It depicts an image of a dwarf. It depicts an image of me. The elephant is on fire. The goblin is on fire. The human is on fire. The dwarf is on fire. I am on fire. The elephant is screaming. The goblin is screaming. The human is screaming. The dwarf is screaming. I am screaming.

The All Solving Hammer: Eventually, project "Fuck The World" is used to solve a wide variety of the Fortress' problems. Although given that most of the Fortress' problems stem from enemy invaders or wild animals from the outside, dumping vast quantities of magma on them is a rather practical solution. It becomes less so when a human caravan appears...

Ax-Crazy: StarkRavingMad's username says it all. "I've started project 'Fuck The World,' a top secret attempt to funnel magma to the outside. I'll kill those elephants. I'll kill all those fucking elephants."

Near the end, mariguana unleashes the magma on a human caravan, the only allies the dwarves had. In a bit of karma, the smoke from the burning bodies provides the catalyst for the fort's collapse into madness.

Badass: GuerillaMedic is the only dwarf to leave Boatmurdered alive, thanks in part to his skill as a soldier and the fact that he's carrying two weapons and is wearing plate mail over his chain shirt.

Several of the elephants, as well. They kill so many dwarves, they actually manage to earn quite long titles (such as one which roughly translates to Lungdespair). Which is not a good thing, but is very badass indeed. For, you know, enraged, homicidal pachyderms.

Sankis, after retiring from rule, survives several more generations of rulers (impressive in itself), attempts to drink magma, beats up a cow and a baby, and finally takes on an elite marksdwarf while on fire, breaking every bone in his body and setting him on fire before finally burning to death himself.

Blessed Are the Cheesemakers: "Apparently the two most significant historical events here in Boatmurdered are elephants and cheese. Take a close look at the cheese ones actually, they aren't even carvings of cheese, but renditions of some other image of a cheese. They're freaking homages!"

Cross Quantum eventually tracks down the work being referenced, and agrees that "this image of a cheese speaks to the dwarven spirit, and will be a cultural treasure for generations to come."

Breather Episode: Doctor Zero's reign of the fortress. Nothing bad actually happens, and he even repairs relations with the elves...before Mariguana's second rule causes everything to spiral out of control...

Cloud Cuckoolander: Unknowing, a diminutive human booted out of his house by his mother and passes off as a dwarf only through his stature and beard. He's also obsessed with Wizardsand Warlocks fanboy who tries to recreate chambers from the game as rooms in the fortress and (unsurprisingly unsuccessfully) casts non-existent magic spells at enemies.

Corpse Land: An ASCII-based form of this graces the exterior of the fortress once they start magma-cannoning all their troubles away, since no one bothers to clean up the remains. Fanart tends to go a little overboard, depicting a massive wasteland of trashed goblin equipment and elephant bones.

Crapsack World: Even from the start. Boatmurdered sits right in the middle of the territory of a huge horde of elephants. The elephants are a constant, impossible-to-get-rid-of problem until the magma tunnels are completed and the outside is flooded with molten rock. Later, Boatmurdered turns into a complicated mess, with nobody knowing what does what, and nothing being managed or completely fixed until the eventual fall of the fortress.

As far as scenery, before PFTW is complete, the predominant things to see in front of the fortress are rampaging elephants and dead dwarves (and the dead dwarves' stuff, which is unusually popular...). Afterward, there's the fields of charred grass and dead ground, and heaps upon heaps of skeletonized elephants and goblins as far as the eye can see.

Creepy Child: Dodók Sabrefrenzies, who while Boatmurdered was tearing itself apart in a haze of ash and flame, happily spent her days playing in the bonehoard. "In all cultures, both name and place will come to elicit hushed tones and ultimately grow to be synonymous with doom of the very soul, itself."

Despair Event Horizon: Guerilla Medic, who by the end was ecstatic despite surviving a tantrum spiral that left only 25 dwarves alive. "He doesn't really care about anything anymore."

Disaster Dominoes: As expected of Dwarf Fortress, this is how Boatmurdered dies, with a chain reaction of murders that leads to hospital patients attacking each other in their beds while the fort burns down around them.

Downer Ending: This beingDwarf Fortress, you know it. Parts of the fortress catch fire and it soon turns into an inferno. The population of Boatmurdered is driven insane by a constant fog of smoke, causing a killing spree, and many dwarves to simply walk into burning sections of the fortress. There are soon only two dwarves left, the ruler and a child, and the ruler abandons the settlement, and the child.

Driven to Suicide: Not uncommon throughout the Let's Play, mostly due to routine fey moods. Later, smoke and miasma cause a lot of dwarves to "wander into the flames."

Due to the Dead: An attempt to build a necropolis for former rulers doesn't really pan out.

Locus: Well at least we're resting peacefully in our tombs. In spirit. Probably underneath elephant remains, in the physical sense. Bremen: I ran out of coffins. Then I ran out of designated graveyard space. Most of you are spending your eternal rest in the garbage dump.

Elaborate Underground Base: Made all the worse by the fact that it's a succession game, with each new overseer effectively coming in blind.

StarkRavingMad: Room full of levers, I don't know what any of 'em do and I'm not going to try and figure it out. With the way this place is set up, any one of them could make the whole place collapse in like an accordion. Armok help me.

StarkRavingMad: Seriously, there could not have been a more appropriate end to the saga of Boatmurdered than a gigantic flaming apocalypse for no apparent reason.

From Bad to Worse: Boatmurdered's history in a nutshell. "And you know, sometimes you think it really can't get much worse... and then it does."

Gone Horribly Right: When a flood traps a number of dwarves outside, Sankis decides to use Project: Fuck the World to evaporate the water. Instead this ends up scalding the dwarves to death. The water, however, is successfully evaporated.

Got Volunteered: StarkRavingMad's starts his section as an innkeeper with no plans to change. Then a group of guards tell him he has the great honor of being appointed governor of Boatmurdered, and turning down such an honor would be ill-advised. He has a sneaking suspicion this has something to do with his recently discovering gold.

At one point, one of the commentators suggests that new "migrants" are actually adventuring parties who get kidnapped and press-ganged into joining the fortress.

Hair-Trigger Temper: The effect of ludicrous amounts of miasma that build up, thanks to the un-dealt-with corpses. This contributes directly to the tantrum spiral following the loss of Sankis's masterpiece.

Hope Spot: The third to last ruler Doctor Zero enjoys a peaceful, productive reign. Relations with both the elves and humans improve, and the "Fuck the World" lever is not used at all. It begins to seem like Boatmurdered may be able to outlast its doom a little longer ...only for everything to spiral out of control soon after.

LARP: Unknowing plays his character as a Wizards and Warlocks-obsessed nerd who stumbled into Boatmurdered after being kicked out of his mother's house and was mistaken for an actual wizard. He tries to cast "spells" during battles, but laments that he fumbles all his attack rolls.

Mad Artist: Sankis, once retiring as ruler, becomes the fort's premier engraver, creating reliefs of flaming goblins, elephants murdering dwarves, burning dwarves, burning humans, cheese, or other reliefs of cheese. After one of her masterwork engravings gets destroyed by magma, she throws a tantrum and beats another dwarf to death while on fire.

Meaningful Name: The players frequently Lampshade how disturbingly prophetic the Fortress's title turned out to be. Though boats never came up.

Mis-blamed: StarkRavingMad appears to blame Locus for the stupid design of the big wide hallway without proper supports, but in actuality that was Keyboard Fox's doing. Locus even complained about it himself later in his rule. invoked

Mordor: After an accident involving an accidental water flood and the release of lava, Boatmurdered's environment became this.

"I love that Boatmurdered has turned into some sort of horrendous evil eyesore on the continent. I'm picturing groups of hardy adventurers gearing up to assault the place just based on the barren ash- and skeleton-filled landscape in front of it."

Only Sane Man: Among the early players, Locus, who actually manages to keep the Elephant population under control through liberal use of traps. StarkRavingMad and Bremen proceed to drop the ball.

Project Fuck The World in all ways sounds like a Pointless Doomsday Device (it works by flooding the entire playable area with lava, no joke) but is extremely practical for getting rid of elephants.

A few of these arise purely by accident, due to abandoned and re-purposed projects. "In looking for the lever to the farm, I found something that might be it nearby. It might also flood the siege workshop, but I'm not exactly sure why that would be a good thing." It does indeed, because originally, that's where the farm was planned.

Pregnant Badass: "A few more war dogs ran out and attacked. I have to say I'm slightly terrified by them. One of the bitches actually gave birth while she was attacking, and her puppies joined in on the carnage."

Press-Ganged: It was theorized by one poster that towards the end the "immigrants" were actually adventurers who came believing Boatmurdered to be a lair of evil and were then shanghaied into working.

Bemen. " I've taken steps to make sure the elephants never menace this fortress again. The others think I'm paranoid, but they're all fools. The elephants will return, and unless we're ready they'll trample every last one of us to dust! " He was right. Unfortunately, his preparations failed spectacularly.

Keyboard Fox sets up a wide array of traps, and Locus goes further by laying a vast trap field for the Elephants. Ironically, StarkRavingMad accuses Locus of having some sort of Elephant issue, but ultimately laxes on the traps, which sets off the fortresses' long-standing issues with the Elephants.

Redshirt Army: "The recruits (minus all those drinking, eating, and sleeping) let out a mighty shout and charge! For the glory of Boatmurdered! No one can fault their bravery... Only their results."

StarkRavingMad ends his turn by paying off some guy to pretend he's him, digging an escape tunnel, and running into the night. The next LPer does a Call Back to this by accidentally entering the fort through the same tunnel. It collapses behind him.

But the door is stuck open! Sabotage! That Elephant sympathizer! That traitor! That Quisling! That...

...Monarch butterfly?

Apparently, showing incredible coordination, a monarch butterfly flew into the door workings just before the time of the attack and jammed it open. With all the bodies and items left by the elephants, no one is doing such a low priority task as cleaning up bug remains.

Start of Darkness: Boatmurdered started out as an innocent enough mining colony. In just over a decade it became hell on earth.

Former ruler "Emperor Sankis" Gatinbomrek spends a few months trying to drink from the magma river (actually the result of a bug), but snaps out of it and goes back to making horrifying engravings.

Another dwarf somehow falls down a well and begins to die of thirst. All of his friends are able to get water around him while the stuck dwarf dehydrates.

In character, one of the later overseers throws out the documentation of the fortress's various Pointless Doomsday Devices. This ends about how you'd expect it to end.

True Art Is Angsty: In-Universe example: much of the art produced by the inhabitants of Boatmurdered focuses on elephants killing dwarfs, or the results of magma floods.

Unknowing's character is trying to write the next fantasy epic between managing the fort. "The halls echoed with a cacophony of screams from the unspeakable atrocities the dwarves endured before succumbing to the sweet embrace of death. On the positive side, progress on my novel has increased exponentially."

Weaponized Offspring: "A few more war dogs ran out and attacked. I have to say I'm slightly terrified by them. One of the bitches actually gave birth while she was attacking, and her puppies joined in on the carnage."

When All You Have Is a Hammer: Once the magma flooding device is in place, it becomes the standard response to threats. Rampaging elephants? Pull the lever! Horde of goblins? Pull the lever! A Colossus? Pull the lever! A human caravan? Pull the l- wait no DAMMIT!

"He now lies useless in his room. I did not wish to kill him as that would merely lead to a replacement. He will suffer in his room until his own kind forget about him, where he will slowly starve to death alone."

Sankis posted: Out of seemingly nowhere Mystic Mongol, Judicator of Boatmurdered, throws himself into the water and drowns.

Zerg Rush: The early days of the fortress have hordes of mandrills terrorizing the fortress until dogs can be trained to dispatch them. Then come the enraged pachyderms, to which the dwarves respond by conscripting the entire fort's population and charging.

Thus ends the official written history of the fortress known as Boatmurdered. May their tortured souls rest in peace.

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